Old News Archive

Kiwanis News 10-17

Three Rivers Kiwanis meets each Wednesday morning at 6:30 at Angie’s Restaurant. Visitors are always welcome.

NOTE TO MY KIWANIS FAMILY

Thank you all for being such supportive, hard-working, caring people, who provide the hearts, heads, and hands for everything that gets done. Thanks especially to Ethelyn for her wisdom, her ideas, her insights, and her great spirit. Her support makes the newsletter possible. Her co-chairing of the Town Hall project is making the renovations a reality. Her caring, understanding, and willingness to listen provide stability to a husband who all too often seems to be going in every direction at once and who needs someone to read the compass. What the husband seems to do is really what the wife and husband do together. Thank you all for your kindness.

Ed

OCTOBER 10 MEETING NOTES

Twenty members and two guests: Key Clubber Carrie Pelletier and Chris and Joe’s nephew Ethan attended the monthly business meeting.

INTERCLUBS: Eben DeWitt, Herb Dunham, and Ed and Ethelyn Treworgy went to Dover-Foxcroft Kiwanis on October 9 to enjoy the fellowship, see a slide show about Boarstone Mountain, and hear a talk about the Audubon Society. On October 12 Bill Sawtell, Chris Almy, Eben DeWitt, Roy Bither, Ed and Ethelyn Treworgy provided an interclub and a half at the weekly meeting of the Dexter Sunrise Kiwanis Club at TJ’s Restaurant. Donna Gormley, Channel 2 TV news anchor, spoke about recent events and how they have affected the way news is presented. She fielded questions from the audience and told us some of Channel 2’s policies and philosophy.

SPONSORED YOUTH: Trish Hayes, Key Club advisor, reported on the budget for the Key Club and on the responsibilities of Key Club members. Each member must perform 50 hours of community service, and the club itself must complete two service projects plus a joint project with Three Rivers Kiwanis. A possible joint project will be a dinner November 11 for veterans, which Chris Beres is organizing. The Key Club will work on the elementary school playground on October 27 in celebration of Make a Difference Day.

Work is beginning on the organization of a Builder’s Club. More information on this will be out soon. In addition, if feasible this year, a Key Kids Club for grades 4 and 5 may be started.

HAPPY AND SAD DOLLARS: $11:00 was donated for the administrative account.

TOWN HALL PROJECT: David Walker, Ethelyn Treworgy, and Ed Treworgy met with Jane Jones to discuss the project and decide how to handle purchases. All purchases will be made by purchase order, to be signed by Town Manager Jane Jones and by Town Treasurer Janet Richards. Uncertainty concerning monthly bills for power used through the new meter feeding the stage lights and sound was resolved: these bills will be paid from the Arts Center Fund. At the inception of the Town Hall Arts Center Project, the stipulation was made by Three Rivers Kiwanis that the project would not be funded by town funds, and that stipulation requires that the power bill be paid by the Arts Center Fund.

Regular monthly meetings of the Town Hall Project Steering Committee will begin at 6:00 p.m. Monday, October 22, at Pleasant Park. The November meeting date will be decided at the October meeting. The meetings will be open to Kiwanians and other citizens.

UPCOMING SPEAKERS:

October 24....Sheila Grant, speaking about conservation

October 31....To be announced

GALA CHRISTMAS PROGRAM

Please be thinking about and planning for a big Christmas program with the new lighting and sound system in Wingler Auditorium. Please give ideas to Ed or Ethelyn. We need to start on this right off.

THE EDITOR’S SPOT

Fall! At this time of year the many colors nature provides give emphasis to the degree our lives are filled with contrasts. Perhaps this year some sober thoughts are appropriate as we think not about contrasting colors, but about the contrasts we are facing as a country.

In recent years Americans as a group have become frivolous, preferring TV to serious thought, choosing Seinfeld and Frasier instead of meeting to discuss the results of such TV shows. Parents have allowed their children to watch Friends instead of sitting with them to discuss the negative impact on their lives of promiscuous sex. Schools have chosen to concentrate on how to make learning fun and easy, rather than provide curriculum that addresses the pressing, practical needs of children: how to make a relationship work; how to be loving, effective parents; how to avoid the constant exploitation by almost every company that has something to sell; how to live within their means; how to stand by their promises; how to prepare nourishing meals; how to find a satisfying relationship with the force that created us; how to take care of our world for all those who are yet to be born; how to care for each other unselfishly; how to be responsible for themselves without asking government to take care of them; how to understand and obey the law.

American government has fallen prey to the idea that it must wait until something happens and then react to it, rather than look ahead to long-term needs and prepare to satisfy them. Legislators have spent precious time on scandals, when they should have been cooperating to see that government addresses the many problems that face us. We see lawmakers behaving unethically and immorally, and we tolerate their lies and rationalizations.

And while we have been watching TV shows and ignoring more important matters, we have been assaulted from outside. Now we are again reacting, but ignoring the larger question of why this has happened. We try to cope with bioterrorism and other unknown threats by setting up temporary alliances with countries that even though they dislike us, find it expedient to ally themselves with us until the current problems are solved. We are not expending energy to find out why we are hated. Our efforts are directed at killing the perpetrators of the attacks on us, even though we will in all likelihood in the process kill more innocent people than died September 11 at the World Trade Center.

As a people we need to become more incisive and candid, not only about our relations with other nations, but even more about what is going on in this country that has greater potential to destroy us that do terrorists: we are not educating our children effectively; we are not coping with illegal drug problems; we allow gangs to kill each other and innocent bystanders; we allow drunk drivers to get back on the road to kill; we allow religion and prayer in legislatures, but refuse to allow children to pray in school, much less help them to understand their place in the universe; we allow television and video games to teach our children violence, sex, and the finer points of how to exploit others; we face a domestic violence crisis; The list goes on and on.

Laughing is good and necessary to well-being; but substituting frivolity for seriousness when our country is facing self-destruction as well as destruction from without will lessen the time we have left to exist as a free society.

There are three things we must do apart from our military response to terrorism to increase our chance for national survival: first, we must examine all the influences that children face and then control them; second, we must become serious about the social forces that threaten to undo us as a society and correct them; and third, we must work with all our being to build positive moral and ethical attitudes back into our society. This is not a hopeless battle, but it is a battle that we have to win if our free society is to continue.

It may seem that a Kiwanis newsletter is not a proper place for this sort of philosophy; but Kiwanis is one of the positive, socially-oriented groups that are equipped to bring about positive change; and ample energy is available to work on our own small world. Every society that has been uprooted or destroyed has had small enclaves that have saved the culture so that ultimately that culture has been available to build a new society. We must do the same by teaching our children the absolute values that must always be saved and by practicing those values ourselves so that we may be effective role models.

Face it: the survival of our society is not up to the government or the military; it is up to us.

WORDS OF WISDOM

Every private citizen has a public responsibility. ......Myra J. Daniels

Do not let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do. ......John Wooden

You’re never a loser until you quit trying. ....Mike Ditka

NOTE - This article reflects the views of the author and not necessarily those of the TRC Alliance Team.